Quotes About Stability

Everything in life... has to have balance.

The secret of life is balance, and the absence of balance is life's destruction.

Decent friends—check. Roof over my head—check. Food in my mouth—check.

I suddenly like his solidness and sense of permanence, as if what you see is what you get, and he will always be and do exactly what you expect him to be and do.

He was from that generation—the type who didn't change things just because they were tired of them, or they were outdated. You bought something, or married someone, and stuck with it.

I hate change more than almost anything.

Things have a way of settling back.

My mother was good at that, making people feel normal. Safe. Like as long as she was there, nothing truly bad could happen.

But it feels like everything all around me is shifting in ways I didn't expect, when all I want is for things to stand still.

Like snow globes, you shake them up, and for a moment everything is upside down and glitter everywhere and it's just like magic—but then it all settles and goes back to where it's supposed to be. Things have a way of settling back.

Thing feels good and normal and the same, which is a comfort.

Me?" She smiled. "I'm the lodestone of the house. I keep you all from flying off into the dark.

circumstances, the borderline bases his attitude toward another person on the most recent encounter, rather than on a more stable and enduring perception grounded in a consistent, connected series of experiences.

Each culture probably needs its own scapegoats as expressions of society's ills. Just as the hysterics of Freud's day exemplified the sexual repression of that era, the borderline, whose identity is split into many pieces, represents the fracturing of stable units in our society.2

As it has always been, so shall it ever be. The King is on his throne and is in control.

Constancy is nothing but a languishing and wavering dance

The socioeconomic structure of a society molds the social character of its members so that they wish to do what they have to do. Simultaneously, the social character influences the socioeconomic structure of society, acting either as cement to give further stability to the social structure or, under special circumstances, as dynamite that tends to break up the social structure.

Before my mother's tremulous anxiety I recover my composure. Now I can walk about and talk and answer questions without fear of having suddenly to lean against the wall because the world turns soft as rubber and my veins become brimstone.

With the physique of a bank safe, he was the embodiment of quiet strength.

People were always ready to yield their wills, to worship the hero, because they were not given a chance for developing initiative, stability, and independence, said the great nineteenth-century Russian sociologist Nikolai Mikhailovsky

Why must man not marry? He cannot marry. He cannot marry, he said angrily. If he is to lose everything, he should not place himself in a position to lose that. He should not place himself in a position to lose. He should find things he cannot lose.

The honeymoon phase is special in that it brings together the relief of reciprocated love with the excitement of a future still to be created. What we often don't realize is that the exuberance of the beginning is fueled by its undercurrent of uncertainty. We set out to make love more secure and dependable, but in the process, inevitably we dial down its intensity. On the path of commitment, we happily trade a little passion for a bit more certainty, some excitement for some stability.

Any person or system exposed to ceaseless novelty and change risks falling into chaos; but one that is too rigid or static ceases to grow and eventually dies. This never-ending dance between change and stability is like the anchor and the waves.

We liken the passion of the beginning to adolescent intoxication—both transient and unrealistic. The consolation for giving it up is the security that waits on the other side. Yet when we trade passion for stability, are we not merely swapping one fantasy for another? As Stephen Mitchell points out, the fantasy of permanence may trump the fantasy of passion, but both are products of our imagination.